It will all be OK in the end,
If it’s not OK,
It’s not the end.
—Anonymous
I posted this saying on my fridge last year. It was at a time when it seemed the Gods were dishing out calamity with a large soup spoon. If you’re over the age of twenty-five, I can pretty much guarantee you’ve gone through something similar.
A prolonged period where everything you touch turns into a big, steaming, never-ending, mess of trouble. As bad as the trouble, chaos, or strife may be though it’s the sense that things will never be ok again that really takes its toll. It’s a painful, scary place to be.
As rational (yet still very primitive) human beings we run when danger comes our way. We want to avoid pain at all costs. It was a good plan two million years ago when we were living on the African savanna, trying to scramble to the top of the food chain. It doesn’t work so much now. Most of us don’t have to worry about large tigers eating us for dinner. We’ll still do just about anything to avoid things that scare us though, especially things that cause us emotional pain. We’ll binge drink, impulse shop, overeat, and madly socialize in an attempt to avoid facing our problems. But by avoiding our problems, we just make them bigger. When we’re deep in the middle of that uncomfortable vortex, it is very easy to forget this.
If we can calm our impulse to flee and turn toward the trouble, meeting it as a valid part of our lives, we will get through it, one way or another.
Everything eventually changes and things do—in some strange way—always seem to work out in the end. It’s not always what we wanted and it’s not always pretty but usually it’s something we can live with.
And, if we allow ourselves to listen to our hearts we’ll usually realize that where we’ve ended up is exactly where we’re supposed to be.
